Word: nicaragua
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...omnibus Government-spending bill last December. Ironically, it was adopted at the urging of the Administration, as a substitute for a far more restrictive measure proposed by Democrat Thomas Harkin of Iowa. Harkin's rider would have banned U.S. support of any "military activities in or against Nicaragua"; the CIA argued that this would prevent necessary covert actions aimed at reducing the flow of arms supplied by the Nicaraguan government to Marxist-led guerrillas in El Salvador. So the House accepted, 411 to 0, a rider offered by Massachusetts Democrat Edward P. Boland, chairman of the Permanent Select Committee...
...contras, however, loudly if extravagantly proclaim their objective to be precisely the overthrow of Nicaragua's increasingly repressive government. To that end, they have launched a much ballyhooed "invasion" - actually a series of hit-and-run raids by guerrillas operating inside Nicaragua. And a stream of reports by American newsmen who have visited contra bases in Honduras has left no doubt that the Administration is assisting them by supplying training, arms, and intelligence on troop movements in Nicaragua's northern provinces gathered by spy plane...
...White House in late March. Last week Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, both members of the committee that oversees CIA operations, voiced their doubts on the Senate floor. Democrat Wyche Fowler of Georgia, just returned from a fact-finding visit to Nicaragua, declared, "No branch of our Government may pick and choose which statutes it will obey...
...White House appeared to be caught by surprise and without any strategy for justifying its actions to Congress. The reason: intelligence officials have never briefed the Administration's political operatives on just what the CIA is doing in Nicaragua. Said one concerned Reagan aide: "It is a potentially explosive issue for us. So far our policy is to say 'no comment' and hope it will go away...
...case, there is no indication that the Administration has any intention of changing its policy toward Nicaragua unless Congress forces it to do so. That policy was spelled out in a secret document summarizing decisions reached by President Reagan and his foreign policy advisers a year ago and was published last week by the New York Times. The document identified the goal of U.S. policy in Central America as to prevent "proliferation of Cuba-model states." While it made no mention of military activity against Nicaragua, it defined U.S. strategy as "increasing the pressure on Nicaragua and Cuba to increase...